Bad Pay, Constant Layoffs in US offices, Outsourcing rampant in several departments - Content Manager Cengage Employee Review

2.0
Aug 8, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people make the company. Great colleagues that are open to helping others. ERGs are great.

Cons

At least 3 mass layoffs in a year. Some of these layoffs have affected the same teams each time. Content Creation is being heavily outsourced and the Content Manager role has significantly changed causing little to no opportunity for growth professionally and financially. Very small raises. They will give you more work than what is within your job description, but will not reward you by increasing compensation. Changes taking place throughout the company are not helping the company create the best product. They are trying to make the most money possible with the lowest quality produced which wasn't what I signed up for when applying. No longer a remote first company.

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Cengage Response
1y
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. I am glad to hear that you enjoyed your colleagues, and our employee resource groups positively impacted your experience.  Regarding layoffs, as we evolve our strategy to meet the needs of the education market, we routinely evaluate our approaches to ensure we are able to be competitive; that sometimes results in difficult decisions about colleagues and teams. Our company remains virtual-first, allowing individual teams to determine what format works best for them. For some groups, this means experimenting with a hybrid work model, but many remain virtual-first. We will continue to experiment across our teams to ensure effective collaboration and performance. We do recognize the need for employees to have time to reset and recharge, which is why we offer a wellness week – providing employees a full week off at the end of the year, in addition to their vacation time and two floating holidays. Regarding our approach to pay, our merit increases are also in line with the market and our HR teams continually monitor pay to make sure we remain competitive.  I wish you the best in your next endeavors, Michael Hansen, CEO 

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5.0
Mar 28, 2026
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Pros

Total rewards, time off, great people and culture

Cons

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1.0
Jul 13, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The individuals below the management level are good people, with some good people at management but C-Suite is horrible.

Cons

C-Suite hides their plans under corporate speak. Cengage was a family owned private company and they sold and ever since then has had, debt, schemes to shuffle and restructure debt while implementing RIFs after RIFs after RIFs...never ending and amazingly has been in increased this last year. From their actions it's outsource as much as you can of company operations and squeeze value from Intellectual Property. Look how many times they've renamed themselves. They had a CTO join for about a month or two until she realized it was a role with no team, no authority and left. The CEO is amazing at spin, you hear "great, great, great" corporate speak as the reality on the ground is "this failed, that failed..what!? they're gone!...what they moved that department offshore!...what!? that department is now a vendor relationship...oh we're not DEI focused because the wind changed". The trend is contraction not expansion, no ground breaking innovation. My jaded view from college on expensive books has only grew since I see how the sausage is made.

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